During a short lecture, Anna Bober-Tubaj, summarising a quarter-century of Józefina and Marek Witas’s activity, listed so many artistic events and meetings with distinguished writers and cultural figures that one might have thought she was not talking about a small bookshop in Bolesławiec, but about some major centre of Polish booksellers in Warsaw. Deputy Mayor Kornel Filipowicz congratulated the booksellers on their work and thanked them for their contribution to Bolesławiec’s development. The Polish Booksellers’ Association presented a laurel and thanks to Józefina Witas for creating culture. Congratulations were also offered by BOK-MCC director Ewa Lijewska-Małachowska, Janina Piestrak-Babijczuk, and the many friends of the bookshop who had gathered. Anna Bober-Tubaj reminded everyone of a moskalik* by Zbigniew Święch, which was created on the spur of the moment and praised the owners of the Agora bookshop.

“And whoever says the Witases
Are not a treasure to us Lechites
Tomorrow I’ll shoot him in the head
Beneath the Carmelites’ monastery”

Thanks to meetings at Agora, the people of Bolesławiec had the opportunity to meet leading figures of Polish literature in person: Tadeusz Różewicz, Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, and Tymoteusz Karpowicz. In 2008, Józefina Witas organised meetings, among others, with the Italian director Giuseppe Recchia and Henryk Baranowski, an outstanding theatre, film and opera director. In 2009, thanks to Agora, our city hosted Jan A. Choroszy, author of the study “Our Father—Ours. Translations, Paraphrases and Other Literary Adaptations of the Lord’s Prayer”.

The special guest at the anniversary celebration was Andrzej Zawada, a humanist associated with Bolesławiec who writes, among other things, about the history and culture of Lower Silesia, as well as issues of cultural identity. The professor read the gathered guests an excerpt from his book “Bresław”. In the excerpt, he described Tysiąclecia Avenue in Bolesławiec. Using changes to the street’s name as an example—the first Polish name was Legnicka, while the change to Tysiąclecia Avenue took place in the 1960s—he showed the changes that occurred in the region after the Polish People’s Republic took over the Western Territories following 1945.

The professor also told an amusing anecdote about a socialist official with no historical awareness or knowledge who named the avenue by the Hospital for the Mentally and Nervously Ill “Avenue of the Millennium of the PRL” and entered that name on official correspondence to one of the avenue’s residents.

The profile of Professor Andrzej Zawada in the Bolesławiec Yearbook was written by Zygmunt Brusiło, the writer’s former teacher and the current president of the Bolesławiec Enthusiasts’ Society.

The event was co-organised by the MUNICIPALITY OF BOLESŁAWIEC and the MUSEUM OF CERAMICS IN BOLESŁAWIEC.

*A moskalik is a short, rhyming and witty poem parodying a fragment of Rajnold Suchodolski’s “Polonaise of Kościuszko” from 1831